I’ll never forget what he said. And in fact, in 1969 the unbeaten Texas Longhornswon the national title despite fielding an all-white teams, beating out an equally unbeaten and integrated Penn State. Against the Tide also suggests that segregation cost Alabama a national championship when the two-time defending champion Tide went 11-0 in 1966 and yet finished third behind Notre Dame and Michigan State, both of whom were 9-0-1. Alabama was coming off a poor season under Bryant (they were 6-5) and was taking on, in USC, a team that some thought had a shot at the national title. “In the back of my mind, you’re thinking, that’s where I want to go. “Obviously, it was a travel issue for everyone, going that far. And, far more significantly, Bryant was, for the first time, inviting an integrated team from outside the state to play in Alabama against one of the last schools in the country with an all-white team. 1966 was a pivotal year in college football history, the year when, in addition to integration, the power of the sport as a TV draw became evident. Briley estimated about a third of the Alabama roster was Black by then. A few weeks later, Mitchell and his mother were in the Bear’s office. For the 1971 season, John Mitchell became the first African American to play on the varsity squad for the Crimson Tide during the regular season after he transferred from Eastern Arizona College. Alabama in a game that that came to represent the conflict between segregation and integration. ), Nor, in fact, did the players need convincing, as Against the Tide implies. A lot of kids wanted to go there. The roles of Rone and others in the integration of the Alabama football program are featured in the documentary Three Days at Foster, released Monday. The result is a rare combination of great sports commentary and relevant socio-political history—but too often, Against the Tide gets too enthusiastic about the game's mythology at the expense of the facts. USC ran for 485 yards and won 42-21. Bryant’s teams won at least nine games every season from 1971-1981. Where is the Outrage Over Angelo Quinto’s Murder? And regardless of whether Bryant specifically acknowledged after the game that Alabama could use a few players like Cunningham on the team – as the old story goes – the point had been proven: To win at the highest level, teams needed the best players, and picking from a Whites-only talent pool was no longer a realistic option. But George Wallace, and his wife, Lurleen, were Alabama’s governors through most of the ’60s. One fact that is not in dispute, however, is that the game marked a turning point in Alabama football. Since 1971, Alabama has only returned to play in Los Angeles two times, once against USC and once against UCLA. He even invited Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and his wife for dinner in Tuscaloosa. Bear Bryant of Alabama and John McKay of Southern California were friends because they could be – two coaches who enjoyed a round of golf, a good joke and didn’t have to worry about stepping on each other since they worked on opposite sides of the country. Although Alabama fell to the Nittany Lions 7-0 on a bitterly cold day, the arduous decade-long process toward the integration of the Crimson Tide football program itself had begun. “He was never against Blacks on the team. The first game would open their 1970 season and would be played on September 12 at Legion Field in Birmingham. And yet another myth, perhaps the hardest to kill, is that after the game, Coach Bryant went into the Trojans locker room, “borrowed” Sam Cunningham, took him to his beaten players, and said “Gentlemen, this is a football player.” The incident is mentioned in a documentary film made about Coach McKay, but the story is purely fictitious. He said, ‘John, I can’t thank you enough.’”, Bear Bryant: The Vince Lombardi of College Football, and Then Some, How an Epic and Violent Family History Fuels Fiction. The next year, the Crimson Tide had a black varsity player: John Mitchell. The game also did not bring about the integration of the Alabama football team; that was inevitable months before when Bryant offered a scholarship to Wilbur Jackson, a … A new documentary from an Athens man is telling the stories of the young men who worked to integrate the sports world in Alabama. The … Bryant had wanted to … Sometimes, you’ve got to take advantage of opportunities when they come. Integration was slowly seeping into big-time football programs in the region, but Alabama was a last bastion. This time, it’s the BCS title game, with top-ranked ‘Bama playing Thursday against No. UNA REUNION TO MARK 50 YEARS OF INTEGRATION OF COLLEGIATE FOOTBALL IN THE STATE OF ALABAMA FLORENCE, Ala. -- On September 21, 1968, the University of North Alabama, then known as Florence State University, became the first predominantly white college in the state of Alabama to play an African American player in a collegiate football game. He wanted to recruit black players like the other schools in the conference were beginning to do. “The reality was that guys wanted to win,” said John David Briley, author of  Career in Crisis: Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant and the 1971 Season of Change. (I know—I was there.) It was also written into a movie script that was never produced, written by former Southern Cal players John Papadockis and Mark Mouska. I swear, Coach Bryant had a smile on his face. Alabama highways could close if ice overwhelms the roadways. But he was a state employee with a good sense of which fights to pick, and he didn’t want to mix it up with the governor. The first student to take that step was Sonnie Hereford IV, who is credited as the first black student to enroll in school in the state of Alabama. Indeed, Alabama has been to the Rose Bowl six times – all before 1946, and before the Southeastern Conference became what it is today – and the game is mentioned in the Crimson Tide fight song. But he surely knew when he made the arrangements that his smaller, slower team stood little chance against the Trojans. It worked out pretty well for us.”, Your email address will not be published. When a Southern team went to play an opponent from the North or West, the coaches of those schools acceded to the request of the Southern coaches by sitting their black player or players. MORE FOR YOU Meghan, Harry And … Bryant was, by almost every account, more popular. It did not, as one of Bryant’s former players, Jerry Claiborne, famously said, “do more for integration in Alabama in sixty minutes than Martin Luther King, Jr. did in 20 years.” But it did, as one Southern Cal player points out in Against the Tide, give the University of Alabama some religion when it came to recruiting football players. Despite the muted objection of segregationists groups in Alabama and a formal protest by the NAACP in Pennsylvania, Bryant took his team north and played the game. Documentary Shares Alabama Football Integration Stories. On June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy federalized National Guard troops and deployed them to the University of Alabama to force its desegregation. Their defense was much better than what it had been. Duffy Daugherty of Michigan State was integrating major college football several years before this USC-Alabama game was even played. OU football literally was a … Integration was slowly seeping into big-time football programs in the region, but Alabama was a last bastion. “He was afraid they’d cut funds for the university and make it a tough situation for everyone – academically, financially and socially,” said Clem Gryska, a longtime assistant for Bryant.